[TomOfTTB]

In most cases you’re probably right. But not always.

The problem is you don’t know the moral character or intelligence level of the people who first stumbled on to a comment. If two ignorant people happen to see a quality comment first and both vote it down that comment is essentially lost to the group. I think we can all agree there are at least a few fools running around here so the idea isn’t farfetched.

So the question is do you want to trust what might be insightful comments to the randomness of timing?

[wehriam]

But 10 people's moral character? 30?

If the comment was really sparkling, it seems unlikely that the first two ignoramuses would drown out the larger cast of HN. It's not all about timing.

[TomOfTTB]

But the whole premise is that once a comment gets a negative score people don't read it anymore. 2 or 3 people could easily do that.

Also, 10 people on a site that gets in the area of 200,000 uniques isn't that significant.

[sgk284]

What if we don't assume every vote is equal. What about weighting a user's vote by some factor of their karma? And/or capping the threshold that a user can vote. i.e A user with 0 karma can vote on comments with 0-3 points. A person with 100 karma can vote on comments -3-6 points. A person with 500 karma can vote on comments -9-9 points, etc... This implies that a comment with ridiculous votes (either positive or negative) has been decided by members of the community that the community has already shown approval for.